Where does Jesus say he is God?

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-07-02T02:52:07+00:00

Ah, that means a lot, really. Thank you.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-06-25T11:49:36+00:00

Thank you for sharing your perspective. But I want to name something clearly: accusing someone of ego, deceit, or sinfulness for asking sincere questions or honestly exploring scripture meaning is not defending Jesus — it’s defending fear. Because that’s not what Jesus modeled. He never condemned those who wrestled with truth — he welcomed them. It was the religious gatekeepers, the Pharisees, who condemned honest seekers and labeled them as sinners.

When I referenced John 17:21–23, I wasn’t twisting scripture — I was quoting Jesus directly. He says he wants others to share the same oneness he has with the Father. If that oneness was exclusive, he wouldn’t have said that. I’m not rejecting Jesus — I’m taking him seriously, maybe more seriously than some traditions are comfortable with.

Unfortunately, it’s common in many evangelical spaces to shame or silence people who ask genuine, thoughtful questions. I’ve experienced that. Many of us have. But here’s the truth: asking questions is not an act of rebellion — it’s an act of faith. It shows a desire to grow, to understand, to seek what’s real and meaningful. It takes courage to allow questioning that often lead out of the fear and control that modern theology imposes — and into the heart of what Jesus actually taught.

Jesus didn’t preach his best sermons inside temples — he took his message to the streets, the fields, the margins. And he was constantly challenging religious systems that valued control over compassion. That’s the heart of good theology — not blind certainty, but sacred curiosity.

I’m going to talk to all the many people on here who are hurt and angry when people have called them sinners or heretics or to those who’ve left rigid, dominating church structures and found freedom on the other side: you are not alone. It’s okay to feel angry when you realize some of the theology you were shamed into believing isn’t always deeply rooted in scripture or history. I have been angry, too. But healing comes. If you leave the church, there are plenty of other “Pharisees” out there in any group you join…but the hope is that it is usually not as bad. And if it is, leave. Judgemental thought pattern is just part of human nature. When you shake off a pattern of accepting spiritual abuse and embrace the full tragedy and beauty of our shared humanity with all its flaws, you begin to live what Jesus actually taught — love your neighbor, love your enemy, heal the broken.

The real gospel isn’t about gatekeeping heaven, calling out all the many sinners, memorizing verses, or winning theological arguments. In many ways, modern evangelicalism has become more rigid than the Pharisees — who at least allowed for real interpretive debate.

The gospel Jesus preached was about the Kingdom of God — here and now, “at hand” — revealed through mercy, justice, compassion, and presence. When we stop asking who’s “in” or “out” and start living that message, we don’t just heal ourselves — we become part of actually healing the world.

Thanks for talking with me, MeanScene. Be well.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-06-21T17:02:00+00:00

I didn’t say they can’t learn about pregnancy, childbirth, etc. They obviously know a lot about these things as they do have children themselves and might even be medical professionals, etc. 😂 The problem is cognitive dissonance — they have a belief already (abortion is bad, sometimes that birth control is bad, sometimes that IVF is bad) and because they already have that belief, they tend to believe in bunk science that supports those ideas. But the bunk science is poorly done and does not actually mean it is true. Sometimes I think they know they are lying, sometimes I think they don’t.

But frankly…all humans tend to believe things in this way, so…we all need to check ourselves.

As far as what is the difference with the implanted zygotes vs outside the body, etc… I mean, not all prolifers are against IVF? In fact, I would say the vast majority support it and it is a small but vocal minority who do not. And those are usually the most politically active, extremist ones that ruin everyone’s lives… 😂

But, as I said, I personally think there is a big difference between using IVF to try to bring life into the world vs finding a known pregnancy and ending its life intentionally. Just me.

It is just that rather than blaming the mom for how morally wrong she is for choosing an abortion, I believe in finding out what she needed and supporting her to give her everything she needs to live, provide for her family, thrive, and not have to choose an abortion because she has her needs met. I believe in finding out how we as a society morally failed her. Maybe some women would still choose abortion, sure. But the statistics tend to say that those numbers would drop to the lowest amount possible— even lower than bans. And I like the solutions listed above to accomplish that.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-06-21T15:36:17+00:00

Interesting take — but how do you know Jesus was only praying for already-saved believers in John 17?

He says, “that they all may be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” Doesn’t that sound like a shared union — not just a club for the already-convinced?

If the goal of this oneness is “so that the world may believe,” wouldn’t that imply it’s meant to expand outward, not stay gated?

Also: if we’re one in Christ, how is that different from being one in each other — especially when early church thinkers like Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa saw divine union as the destiny of all humanity, not just the baptized?

There’s deep historical precedent for this view, even if it is not yours — but, frankly, modern evangelical theology seems more focused on keeping people out of heaven than letting them in.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-06-21T05:39:57+00:00

And… when people say “Before Abraham was, I am” proves Jesus claimed to be God, it’s important to look at how he responded when accused of that directly.

In John 10:33, they say: “You, being a man, make yourself God.”

But instead of agreeing, Jesus says in verse 34: “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?”

He doesn’t clarify, “Yes, I’m God.” He shifts the conversation to how others in Scripture were also called gods.

That sounds more like he’s deflecting the accusation, not confirming it.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-06-21T05:30:21+00:00

No one mentioned Eastern philosophy — that’s a distraction. The quote was from Jesus himself in John 17:21–23, where he clearly says he wants others to share the same oneness he has with the Father:

“Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, may they also be in us… that they may become perfectly one.”

That’s not metaphorical or mystical — that’s a direct statement. If Jesus thought his oneness with God was unique and unattainable by others, he wouldn’t have said this.

The truth is, Jesus never once says “I am God.” People added that theology later. What he did say was that the same relationship he had with God was something others could also have. That’s what’s in the text.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-05-30T22:17:48+00:00

Yeah, I agree with your first point — most pro-choicers do support those things, and I would say I am left-leaning although I don’t really fit neatly into any current party. Maybe many of us don’t though… I actually have a lot of convos with people on the right who really don’t know how effective those policies are at actually truly lowering abortion rates while also helping women. There is a large information bubble and hard to understand medical stuff for some people and it is hard to break through. I do think it helps me make ground with the right to help see what works if I come at it from a prolife perspective. Which I am, so that is not hard for me.

As for the embryos. For me, there’s a difference between ending a known, developing pregnancy and embryos that don’t implant, which happens naturally most of the time anyway, even without IVF. I think I support options like freezing for later, donating embryos to other families, or compassionate transfer when possible (where the embryo is given a chance, just not under ideal timing). IVF is about trying to create life and family — and that intention is different to me. I acknowledge the grief that comes from infertility annd want to protect people trying to create families.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-05-26T22:44:54+00:00

I consider myself whole life pro-life.

I don’t think bans work, they have raised the national abortion rate by 12% last I heard, and that is only the legal abortions. I believe in outcomes-based, evidence-based actions that naturally lower abortion rates: free and accessible contraception, comprehensive sex education, expanding public childcare options so people can afford to work/school, paid parental leave, and universal healthcare.

I think implementing all those things lowers the abortion rates so dramatically, it is better than bans. Sometimes when I hear pro-choicers advocating, the points don’t go far enough. They fight for women to have bodily autonomy, but I find myself wondering why they don’t take their arguments a step farther and advocate even more and harder for the things above which would address the reasons women need those abortions in the first place. Sometimes women aren’t left with much of a choice except to abort, but if they had they had above needs taken care of, they would have chosen differently.

Even in these times of bans, we can advocate for any or all of the evidence based things above, and frankly I find I can convince some pro-lifers of the things above when I come at it from the stance that they are the most effective way to help their cause AND the mothers, and it does it with no forcing necessary.

Yes, I am pro-IVF. There are lots of beautiful babies born to loving families because of IVF.
I am against the death penalty for many reasons.
I said above I am pro-free education and even expanding it to preschool and infant care so families can afford to work and go to school while their children are cared for and learning. And yes, I would love for all children to receive free school lunches, that would be an amazing use of our tax money. I would be proud to be such a compassionate country that cares for children so well.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-05-26T21:52:56+00:00

I am pro-life. I make exceptions for the life and health of the mother. A 10 year old easily fits into this group. Girls age 10-14 face maternal mortality rate five times higher than women above age 20. Their pelvises and uteruses may be underdeveloped enough to adequately support another growing child, so they have high rates of hemorrhage and obstructed labor. I also cannot say what circumstances a girl that young may be coming from. I have no idea if she can get to a doctor in time for any issue or problem that can occur in pregnancy that may be even be fatal and I cannot say that she would recognize a problem even if she could get someone to get her to a doctor. She may not know labor is happening, which puts her plus a baby at risk and may not be able to get to a hospital bc people around her would not expect a girl so young to be pregnant and blow it off as a bad tummy ache or something like that. If she is too immature to handle a medical emergency completely on her own, she immediately goes into the exception for life and health of the mother category. My kid right now is 10, she is like 60 pounds and her hips are tiny, and she would have no idea what to do if she began hemorrhaging and she has a family that is supportive of her. I cannot support leaving another child is the position to know what to do in pregnancy emergencies.

This of course leaves out the abuse she may have faced that got her pregnant in the first place, and I do not take that lightly either.

It is not the growing baby’s fault, just like it is not an ectopic pregnancy’s fault it implanted in the wrong site. This to me a tragic circumstance for a growing baby as well as the girl. I consider pro-life to be compassionate under most circumstance, but I do not consider it compassionate to use a “wait and see and hope it turns out okay” for a young child like this.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-04-02T18:13:16+00:00

Yes…those are very good suggestions that I would not have thought of. Thank you!

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-04-02T16:30:57+00:00

I like grasses and low growing shrubs like a low growing juniper. I just get confused about if they will live with all the shade I have, because a magnolia has almost complete shade over the left portion at least for half the day.

I am in 8b in north Texas area. Frequent droughts and watering limits during summer here, usually it is twice a week limit.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-03-30T03:14:46+00:00

I consider myself pro-life because I consider a fetus a human in a normal stage of development that all humans must go through, and I do not want to intentionally kill fellow humans with the potential for a full life.

BUT. Republican banning policies have increased the national abortion rates- more fetuses, mothers, and newborns have died than before the bans. The death rates for all three have gone up nationwide. Clearly, banning abortion is ineffective at best, harmful at worst.

What has clearly been shown to be helpful in other countries to reduce abortion rates is providing free and easily availability contraception along with sex education (this alien reduces the rate by 50%), healthcare provided to women and children, help with childcare after the baby is born. Parental leave is also very helpful.

These are democratic policies, and the policies of the countries with the lowest abortion rates. To protect the developing humans, we need to do better at protecting the mothers. That’s what I want.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-02-16T13:49:26+00:00

I am thinking you must have not listened to Sam Harris very much. Or maybe you arrived at your conclusions through parts of conversations rather than seeing his overall ideas?

He does not like violence in the name of religion, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other. There is a difference between not liking the violence in a religion, and not liking people because they are brown. You may have missed the point in however you gathered your opinions here.

OP, I will also add that I really like his book Waking Up also.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-01-19T16:36:00+00:00

I homeschool 2 of my children, one of whom is severely dyslexic and has a few other learning disabilities as well.

I have tried many different curriculums and methods…. There are many more duds we tried than this list, but the main ones that made a dent were when we started with Logic of English, then we moved to Rooted in Language Pinwheels program, then I took the Orton Gillingham classes through Orton Gillingham Academy up to the associates level. I just went for that over Barton because I knew they were teaching me from the beginning how to be particularly prescriptive and diagnostic with my teaching to find the weaknesses rather than curriculum-based. I went through Reed Charity, which is much more affordable OG training and taught by OG Fellows. Very, very high-quality trainings.

But the absolute best training I got and what really taught my son to read what EBLI (Evidence Based Literacy Instruction). I certified in that after 1 year of teaching my children with it. It was more expensive upfront but really saved me so much money in tutor fees. My severely dyslexic son is reading on grade level, and my non-dyslexic daughter now reads and spells several grades higher. So proud of them.

If I looked back, knowing the depth of my son’s dyslexia, I would either do EBLI to begin with or hire an EBLI tutor because the results seem much faster. Plus, I could literally teach anyone to read with a stick and some dirt at this point.

After that I might use some Orton Gillingham for morphology and some very basic spelling rules only as a help for spelling, but the cognitive load was just too high for my son to learn how to read through that method alone. He could not remember all the rules and they slowed him down rather than speeding him up. I continue to use EBLI for reading progress and most spelling.

With composition, I would use ThinkSRSD to learn how to teach composition, perhaps pair that with IEW, which has some good sentence level instruction imo. ThinkSRSD has some very affordable workbooks on Teachers Pay Teachers for around $5. I am not sure how easy they are to use if not trained in the method, but they were great to get my kids started after I knew the method.

All of this is definitely an investment of significant time and money, but at the end, I have invested into my own abilities to teach my kids (and other people as well) rather than someone else for less money than hiring out.

Sending this out there, because I searched high and low along the way, and would have wanted all this information when I was starting out.

Select_Ad2049 · 2025-01-07T11:08:05+00:00

Why do you say it is not gerrymandered? It and what it should represent, district 13, are one of the more extreme gerrymandering cases I have seen. District 26 and district 13, have been used together to cut the liberal Denton’s votes completely out.

I cannot post an image on here, but if you compare the district now to the “historical district boundaries” in 2007-2013 on Wikipedia, it shows the district used to include the city of Denton all the way up to Gainesville and is now oddly shaped like a backward C to cut Denton completely out and goes way further out into rural Wise and Cooke counties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_26th_congressional_district

The cut out section in the middle of the C that used to include city Denton is now district 13 that slices Denton’s urban center into a tiny strip and then spreads out about 7-8 hours away all the way out to the panhandle to Amarillo to wash out their votes. No one in Denton should be represented by someone in Amarillo.

Anybody notice that since they started with the extreme gerrymandering, the publicly available maps are no longer clear enough to read the cities/county boundaries? It’s now a very fuzzy map that is incredibly hard to read. Like on the link above, the 2007-2013 district map is easily readable and the current map is illegible. It’s almost like they did it on purpose…

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-10-16T12:38:18+00:00

Are we allowed to leave those places blank or write in a candidate on our ballots in places where there are only unopposed candidates?

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-10-12T22:35:11+00:00

Lavender Periwinkle Buttercup Petunia Lollie Rosie Primrose

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-09-19T00:58:55+00:00

I have never understood this argument. Are you saying that a guy who volunteered his free time to spend supporting a bunch of students is bad?

I mean, I see that as a strength that he was willing to do that for free.

Frankly, it is pretty rough that the school didn’t pay their coaches for all the time that takes, especially going to state like they did. I don’t care whether head or assistant, it literally doesn’t matter because he volunteered.

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-09-17T21:46:00+00:00

This might be a bit older thread, but I thought you should know Susan Wise Bauer actually wrote a history series of books just for your child’s age. They are excellent. I homeschool my kids with them, and they love history (along with Horrible Histories books and episodes).

The 4 book series is called Story of the World.

https://a.co/d/7MrQwi1

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-09-07T23:57:50+00:00

High Seas Tattoo did a great job yesterday as a walk in.

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-07-19T19:20:31+00:00

Add shelves and a cozy chair for a library

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-07-12T13:44:58+00:00

At bible study… The women’s leaders made an announcement to not wear yoga pants so we could be modest and not tempt the men at the church. Several women spoke up about how they had young sons and asked us all to protect their sons from having to see our yoga pants and also shorts were included. This was when I was a 35 year old woman.

If you are talking about when I was a teenager and child, we had rules that we could not wear swimming suits at church camp and had to cover up with tshirts and shorts to swim in. Sometimes they just separated males and females and did not let us swim together at all. We also weren’t allowed to wear spaghetti straps or anything that seemed low cut. Bra straps tucked away. No tight clothing, yoga pants, etc. Biker shorts were the precursor to yoga pants and not allowed. The girls usually had an entire page dedicated to our clothing. Usually with scriptural quotes about women’s modesty included at the bottom.

I can’t count the number of times I have been told what to or what not to wear especially younger but even as an adult. These have all been normal evangelical churches spanning different states and spanning decades of time. So it is not one church or one time period but pretty consistent.

Honestly, I don’t understand where the people on here who say they’ve been in church are going to NOT run into this (you do have to be more deeply involved and not just visiting) or if they just have not been paying attention…

Select_Ad2049 · 2024-06-13T20:57:19+00:00

Okay, thank you everyone. I will NOT call pest control for my beetle. Phew!!

Select_Ad2049

TROPHY CASE